Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Wayne Grudem on Guidance from the Holy Spirit

  

 

9. Guidance from the Holy Spirit. Yet another source of guidance is personal direction from the Holy Spirit. Such guidance was explicitly identified in Paul’s second missionary journey:

 

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (Acts 16:6–7; see also 8:29; 13:2; 15:28)

 

But is direct guidance from the Holy Spirit part of the life of all Christians or was it unique to Paul and the other apostles in the book of Acts? I am convinced that the New Testament teaches that direct guidance from the Holy Spirit is a normal component of the life of Christians generally, and it is one of the factors we should take into account in seeking to know God’s will.

 

Paul wrote to Christians in Rome, whom he had not yet met, about an experience of being led by the Holy Spirit that he seems to have thought of as characteristic of the lives of Christians in general:

 

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Rom. 8:14)

 

The Greek word here translated “led” is agontai, the present passive indicative form of agō, which means “to direct the movement of an object from one position to another” or (in a spiritual sense) “to lead/guide morally or spiritually.”

 

Similarly, Paul writes in Galatians:

 

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (Gal. 5:18)

 

Significantly, Paul here uses the same Greek verb (agō) to speak of such leading by the Holy Spirit.

 

Some commentators argue that this leading by the Holy Spirit consists only in the Spirit giving an inward desire or inclination to obey God’s moral laws as revealed in Scripture. For example, Thomas Schreiner writes that being led by the Spirit is not a matter of “specific guidance for daily decisions,” but rather of “being directed by the Spirit to live a life that pleases God.”

 

Other commentators, however, see guidance by the Holy Spirit as also including situation-specific direction to make a certain decision, take a specific action, or go to a particular place. Gregg Allison and Andreas Köstenberger write,

 

Statements such as “The Holy Spirit is leading me to do such and such” or “The Spirit told me to say such and such” have become so commonplace that a tendency has developed in some circles to avoid discussion of the guidance of the Spirit. However, this work of the Spirit is well supported biblically and confirmed in genuine experiences of his guidance in the lives of both individual Christians and churches.

 

And Craig Keener’s book Gift Giver contains 34 pages on “recognizing the Spirit’s voice” and “learning to hear God’s heart by the Spirit,” including several personal anecdotes of being guided by the Holy Spirit to walk someplace, talk to someone, and so forth.

 

I think that the “situation-specific guidance” view is more convincing here, primarily because of the way the Greek verb agō is used elsewhere in the Bible. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was often cited by New Testament authors), the verb agō is used 113 times to speak of leading by a personal agent (that is, leading by a human person or by God). Every one of those 113 examples refers to situation-specific directional guidance that leads to a particular location or decision. None of the examples speaks of imparting an inclination to obey God’s moral standards apart from situation-specific direction. Here are some examples (all of these examples use agō in the Greek text, though the English translation uses “bring” instead of “lead” in several verses):

 

Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought (agō, “led”) them to the man to see what he would call them. (Gen. 2:19)

 

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. (Gen. 2:22)

 

[Joseph, speaking to his brothers:] Bring your youngest brother to me. So your words will be verified, and you shall not die. (Gen. 42:20)

 

And I will lead the blind

in a way that they do not know,

in paths that they have not known

I will guide them.

I will turn the darkness before them into light,

the rough places into level ground. (Isa. 42:16)

 

The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of the house of the Lord, which faces east. (Ezek. 11:1)

 

And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles (Ezek. 11:24)

 

In addition, agō is used several times to speak of God guiding Israel through the wilderness:

 

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness. (Deut. 8:2)

 

The Lord your God … who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock. (Deut. 8:14 –15)

 

So I led them out [a related verb, exagō] of the land of Egypt and brought [agō, “led”] them into the wilderness. (Ezek. 20:10)

 

When we turn to the New Testament, we see a similar pattern. The verb agō is used 53 times in the New Testament, and in the overwhelming majority of cases it refers again to the situation-specific directional guidance leading to a particular location or decision. Here are some examples:

 

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. (Luke 4:1–2)

 

Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. (Luke 19:30)

 

Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters. (John 18:28)

 

It is fair to conclude that when agō is used in contexts that speak about leading by a personal agent, it overwhelmingly refers to a situation-specific kind of leading to a specific location or decision, not merely imparting an inclination to do good or evil. And since Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18 speak of leading by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is surely a personal agent, being “led by the Spirit” in these verses should also be understood to refer to situation-specific detailed leading to a specific location or decision.

 

We should also notice that in both Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18, Paul uses a present-tense verb to describe a quality that characterizes the lives of “sons of God” generally, and therefore it is appropriate to understand the present tense as indicating a continuous aspect to this leading, something like “all who are being led regularly by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Paul does not speak of a person being guided merely by his or her own moral convictions or desires, but by the Holy Spirit himself, who is a person. Paul is speaking of personal guidance from the Holy Spirit to individuals, and he indicates that this experience is characteristic of the lives of all Christians.

 

In the same context in Galatians, Paul gives similar instructions to Christians in the churches of Galatia:

 

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Gal. 5:16)

 

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. (Gal. 5:25)

 

All of these passages speak about an expectation that Christians in general will experience a measure of leading or guiding by the Holy Spirit, who will influence their evaluation of various choices and courses of action in a subjectively perceived way. (Wayne Grudem, What the Bible Says about How to Know God’s Will [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2020], 29-35)